3.5% — A Small Number With Huge Implications
Kelley and I have recently returned from 10 days in London, one of the most genuinely multi-cultural cities I’ve spent time in. We had many deep and interesting conversations, one of which I’ll touch on further down. (And others I might discuss in more detail in a future post.) Most of those we spoke with—friends, family, colleagues, strangers, whether in politics, arts, sciences, religion, nonprofits and/or social justice organisations—are as distressed as we are about what is happening in this country and their own, and its implications for the rest of the world. Several of our conversations revolved around the findings about change and civil disobedience that I detail in this post—which I had just begun drafting before I left Seattle and so was top-of-mind.
The findings discussed below are the work of Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.1
3.5% of a population can force real and lasting change
Nonviolent civil resistance, or unarmed civil struggle, can and does force real change in the behaviour of government, or, if the government cannot change, then its collapse. Stop and think about that a moment, please: not slight change, or meaningless promises but real change or the fall of government. According to Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2012), once around 3.5% of a nations’s population2 has begun active and sustained participation in nonviolent civil resistance, success becomes increasingly likely with time—to the point where in a country like the US we can go so far as to say inevitable.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the BBC talking about how this has worked internationally.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.
In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands. While in 2019, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance.
— BBC
Here’s Chenoweth herself discussing her work. Watch it; it’s only 12 minutes. Pay attention. She speaks to 150 years of data; if you doubt the numbers I use here, go argue with her: she has the receipts. Moreover, though she was speaking 13 years ago, her central thesis is sharply relevant to us here in the US (and, as I discovered, the UK) today more than ever.
What this means for the US today
3.5%. A small percentage—but in terms of the US population, big absolute numbers. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2025 the population of the USA was 341,784,857. 3.5% would be 11,970,000. Essentially 12 million people.
If 12 million Americans engaged in nonviolent protest/civil disobedience, the current administration would either change significantly or collapse.
12 million. Are there 12 million Americans willing to commit to protest? I think there are. I think that since late 2016 an increasing number of ordinary people are becoming aware, unhappy, and organised. These organisations are many and varied. Some are very small and unconnected to anything else—blocks of houses where families have learnt to look out for neighbours during floods and wildfires, government shut-downs, or sudden DOGE-mandated layoffs. Other organisations at the congregation or neighbourhood or city level are loosely networked. Then there are nodes of specialised groups—food banks, whistle-makers, observers, trainers in nonviolent response—who are starting to coordinate. And then there are cities and states who are becoming rapidly radicalised because of governmental overreach, callousness, and murder: Minneapolis/St Paul and Minnesota; Los Angeles and California; Chicago and Illinois.
Just as important, though often less reported, are the smaller communities in more rural areas where voters are as likely to be registered as Republicans or Independents as Democrats. See, for example, reporting on Wilder, Idaho, population 1,725, where 72% of the county it sits in voted for Trump in 2024: 400 citizens or legal residents, including children, were zip-tied and detained, 105 were held on immigration charges, and 75 were deported. You can risk a bet that in the mid-terms, that county voting percentage is going to look rather different. If you want more on smaller communities and their less-reported tribulations at the hands of immigration and border control agents, see, for example, this NYT article (gift link).
There’s no way to know for certain how many of us there are, but my guess is more, and very possibly a great many more, than 12 million.
But can those 12 million commit to the extent required—and what is the extent required? Can that commitment be sustained—and how long would that be? Can those 12 million coordinate—and to what extent should their actions be concentrated or decentralised?
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know the finer details, but bearing in mind, always, that we are talking about nonviolent behaviour in support of a clearly articulated goal, two things I feel sure of:
- In terms of mass protest, the more people that gather on the street—and are seen to gather—the more others will join. There is safety in numbers. (I’ve talked about this before.) In the bluntest of terms, the more ordinary Americans that participate, the greater the odds are of the enforcement agencies (ICE, FBI, National Guard, police) becoming unwilling to gas, shoot, or beat protestors: their kids, their parents, and their friends might be in the crowd. This, according to Chenoweth, is what has happened in other times and places.
- Coordinated protests must happen in towns, small cities, and big cities, in communities both red and blue. More than one of those protests must, on the same day, be huge—record-breakingly huge.
- The protests must show not only determination but commitment to kindness and building community rather than to hate and division. Hate does not help. (I’ll return to hate in a bit.)
What do I base all this on? Thinking about US movements for change during my lifetime, looking at the numbers, and considering the results both obvious and subtle.
Precedent in the US
All these numbers are available via a variety of sources. Wikipedia has an aggregation page with enough links to get you started. Please note that while some of these protests were met with violence, whether from over-zealous law enforcement or from hateful counter-protesters, the overwhelming majority remained steadfastly nonviolent in the face of provocation. Also, while it’s important to acknowledge the risk of violence, it’s equally important to remember that, according to Chenoweth’s data, the greater the percentage of a community’s population that’s marching, the less likely it is that local law enforcement or National Guard will be willing to use violent tactics against a crowd of those who may be their relatives, friends, or neighbours.
In terms of single-day actions in the US in my lifetime, some examples:
- Earth Day (1970): On April 22, more than 20 million Americans (10% of the population at the time) took part in teach-ins, clean-ups, and rallies in more than 10,000 towns and campuses. Huge, huge numbers, but a single-day decentralised event. It was not a protest; the focus was not on marching with the goal of regime change but on raising the environmental consciousness of those in power and agitating for legislative action. Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and absolutely raised the bar on environmental action in this country, an effect that lasted 55 years—until the actions of the current administration, which has effectively destroyed the Clean Air Act and other safeguards.
- Women’s March (2017): On January 21, 3.3 – 4.6 million Americans (1-1.3% of the population at the time), the majority of them women, marched in over 50 states as counter-programming to Trump’s inauguration. There were over 750,000 in Los Angeles and 500,000 in DC. Those huge numbers buoyed the participants; judging by anedotal accounts, I believe the Women’s March laid the foundations for much of today’s local organising, whether focused on neighbourhood-scale actions or forming wider networks.
- No Kings (2025): On June 14, about 5 million Americans (1.4% of the population) marched in over 2,000 locations in protest and counter-programming of Trump’s Flag Day military parade. On October 18 there was another coordinated protest, this time estimated at between 5 – 7 million Americans (1.4 – 2.0% of the population). This may be the nation’s largest biggest single-day protest. But it was not concentrated in select cities—it consisted mainly of smaller gatherings in many locations. Even so, I believe it consolidated much of the networking and experience of the Women’s March and, again, strengthened the commitment to change and the ability to coordinate action.
In terms of more sustained protest:
- George Floyd/Black Lives Matter (2020): Over the three months after George Floyd’s murder, polls3 suggest 15 – 26 million Americans (4.5 – 6% of the population) joined at least one racial justice demonstration, with the single-highest day turnout on June 6 of perhaps 500,000—though not all in one place. That lack of massive numbers in any single time and place, and (perhaps—I’m happy to be corrected on this) specific actionable demands may be why outcomes are less obvious. Nonetheless, I believe these protests and organised networks helped make the No Kings actions possible. I also believe it had an impact on more localised change—in terms of city and county police regulations and response.
Much more recently, the spate of ICE Out protests resulting largely from the killings in Minneapolis/St Paul of two US citizen observers, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by Customs and Border Protection agents, are more difficult to quantify. For one, it’s difficult to find reliable numbers (though they seem to have been lower than most protesters hoped). And for another, while there seem to have been some results—the ICE presence in Minneapolis/St Paul and some other cities is being reduced; there will be an investigation into the death of Pretti but not Good—there is no commitment to agents removing masks or wearing ID, or obtaining judicial warrants before breaking into people’s homes and hauling them away with no due process. Democrats in the Senate have (temporarily, if past experience is any guide) found some spine—but at best these results are minor and, at worst, misleading.
What does all this mean?
That we have most of the groundwork already done: the conditions exist for a nation-changing protest. But. We need more, and bigger. With longer planning and very clear demands. Imagine beginning with a single-day nationwide General Strike, school closings, and people on the street in huge numbers—more than 12 million, with, say, 1.5 million in DC, at least half a million in each of the ten largest cities, and tens or hundreds of thousands in smaller cities and towns across the country—followed by two weeks of massive and peaceful demonstrations and/or vigils and/or withdrawal of services or money. And/or perhaps more specific and regionally focused actions.
Is this possible? Yes. Many unions are ready. Many congregations of many creeds are ready. Many administrations at city, county, and state level are ready. Many local and regional law enforcement agencies are reevaluating their cooperation with federal enforcers. Community organisers are ready. There are more and more people out there who have recent experience of protest, demonstration, and vigil. They are connected, formally and informally. Ordinary Americans are more than ready; once we see it begin, we will join. There are easily 12 million of us.
Negativity bias—stats and stories
I promised to touch on those interesting conversations we had in London, and this is where it gets even more hopeful. To understand why let’s first consider something I’ve talked about often: negativity bias.4 People pay more attention to the negative than the positive. It’s an evolutionary trait: humans are prey animals; in survival terms it’s more cost-effective to focus on a sound that could be a predator than on a laugh. As a result we are more attuned to and tend to overweight the importance of the negative than the positive. We can look to the evidence of our own everyday experience; anyone with even a passing familiarity with social media understands that bad news spreads faster and further than good news. Negative disinformation moves even faster. Countless studies back this up: all over the world, ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’
This is important. I want you to understand and believe it: in the context of information and/or news (whether gossip, anecdata, mainstream media, social media, tabloids, podcasts, newsletters or government announcements), negativity bias can lead to a distorted perception of reality. This distortion can be extreme—normally reasonable people can have a seriously skewed understanding of the world around them. There are reams of data to back this up but rather than hammering at you with tables and statistics and links, let me tell you a story.
I used to teach women’s self-defence for a living; my students were women and girls (and a handful of men) of all ages, abilities, colours, creeds, and socio-economic backgrounds. Around the second session, when I started showing women how to apply the strikes I taught in the first session—how to seriously hurt their attacker—they baulked. Why? Because, they said, fighting back would just make it worse, make their would-be rapist (rape and sexual torture is what most women fear) angry and more like to hurt them. Everything they knew about the world told them that fighting back would do no good: all you had to do was read the newspaper, watch the news, listen to the radio to learn that (this was before the internet).
I would sit them down, and ask: What do you think the odds are of a woman fighting off a rapist? Someone might venture, Five percent? No, I’d say: if the attacker is unarmed, data show that 72% of the time if a woman fights back she will avoid rape; if she fights back against an attacker armed with a knife, her chances are 58%; against a gun, 51%. Even if a would-be rapist is armed with a gun and the woman he has targeted is unarmed, if she fights back the odds of her avoiding rape are greater than even. (The odds of her being less badly hurt are also better if she fights back than if she doesn’t.)
Those stats were from a 1985 study, Ask Any Woman: A London Inquiry into Rape and Sexual Assault, Ruth E. Hall (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1985). While writing Always (published 2007), I went to the Department of Justice website to check their statistics: the numbers held up. Looking at what info I can find now (and the internet has got so bad that it’s difficult to find clear answers) it seems that women’s odds have not got worse.
So why do women believe fighting back is useless? Because the media tells them so. Media, mainstream and social, reports completed rapes (the bloodier and more brutal the better) far more often than attempted rapes. While in real life women have an almost 3:1 chance of beating off a would-be rapist, the media publicises 13 completed rapes for every attempted but uncompleted rape. (Why? Because bad news garners clicks. Bad news sells ads.) When it comes to gender violence, media negativity bias is 39:1. That is a seriously skewed version of reality. That’s what we’re up against; that’s why it’s easy to read bad news and believe the world is irretrievably broken.
Saving the best for last
Right now there is a lot of bad news to notice. In the US we are hit daily with everything from the disassembly of public health and the cancellation of research programmes to federal agents executing citizens in the streets. In the UK we talked to people in positions of formal and informal responsibility at the national, community, or diocesan level who are worried by the signs of hatred visibly rising in their spheres of interest—racist graffiti, street violence, social media attacks.
Again and again we brought up this notion of 3.5% and change. It excited everyone—it is exciting. But then one woman Kelley was talking to suddenly stopped and said (I’m paraphrasing a second-hand report) “Oh! All that hatred out there, that feels so overwhelming, like there’s nothing we can do because the whole world hates us… What if it’s only 3.5% who are full of hate, and not the whole world?”
When Kelley told me this later that night I said, Yes! And, oh, I wish I’d been part of that conversation! Because I would have pointed out that when you factor in the cognitive bias towards the negative, it’s probable that the level of real hatred, the kind of hatred that leads to burning synagogues, spitting on immigrants, attacking transfolk—or to marching in the street to counter-protest nonviolent marches for change, calling your representative to vote for dehumanising legislation against transgirls in sports, or directly funding hate groups—is not just small but tiny. Think about it. Think about the numbers of people who show up for anti-abortion vigils or White Power marches or transphobic campaigns; try to remember how many homophobes showed up at the last Pride event: minuscule, comparatively speaking. Insignificant when weighed against those of us who protest hatred and cruelty.
If it takes only 3.5% of a population to change the direction of a nation; if the hatred we feel is out there isn’t quite as widespread as we think; and if you factor in the negativity bias at a ratio of 39:1, well, even if the bias was wrong by an order of magnitude, it’s still a heartening answer. Change is possible. More possible than we might think.
I don’t know what will force the growing dissent against the current administration’s agenda into full flower but I have no doubt it’s coming. And when it does I have no doubt it will succeed. There are so very many more of us than them.
- Many thanks to Mary Brandt whose Wellnessrounds.org post brought Chenoweth to my attention and helped crystallise what I’d been fumbling towards for a while. ↩︎
- I’ll be using ‘population’ and ‘Americans’ interchangeably to refer to those who live in this country, whether they’re citizens or not. ↩︎
- Lowest estimate from Pew, highest from Kaiser Family Foundation. These are self-reported numbers rather than estimates from photos and professional crowd counters. ↩︎
- I usually talk about it in terms of Misery Lit, and the perception that High Art has to be depressing. ↩︎
